Once
upon a time people told each other stories for entertainment, and
perhaps to some extent to help transmit their culture, for in the clash
of cultures as was occuring in Europe throughout the age of fairy tale
people will often define themselves by such stories. However as they
passed their stories on from generation to generation something
happened, their cultures changed, over and over again the concerns and
thoughts of the people changed, some of these changes took years,
others where dramatic from conversions to new religions, famines that
drove them from their homes, and invaders from other lands. And as
these people changed so to did their stories, morphing and evolving,
these stories passed from culture to culture from person to person, and
as they where passed on they would grow becoming a mean of the humanity
from whence they came, and while such stories will always reflect the
time that they come form they will reflect in some way thousands of
years of human history, for the thoughts, fears, hopes, dreams, and
lives of thousands if not millions of people back each story.

These
people who told stories went through cycles, cycles of prosperity and
of unparalleled poverty and horror, from times when starvation required
the abandonment of children, to times when raging hoards from unknown
lands destroyed everything that they held dear. Diseases swept the
villages, with unknown causes the illnesses killed half the population
prompting philosophers to advice parents not to get close to their
children.

At
the same time these people experience triumph as they built a
Renaissance, found room to dream, had children they loved, and a spouse
who loved them. Many of these people even experienced the courage to
stand up against the darkness, to overthrow their lords and to hope for
a better future.

This
is the world of fairy tales, a strange world of magic and unparalleled
human emotion. These stories are often the raw uncensored fears of the
humans who created them, from dark woodlands to cannibals, incest, and
wicked stepmothers, these stories tell of human history and human
thought as few other things can. For as means of humanity folktales are
not the thoughts and aspirations of one person but of generations upon
generations of people. And each person has their own hopes, fears, and
dreams. The fact that so many people have touched on fairy tales makes
their interpretation in the historical purposes very difficult. For
many symbols that made the first story significant have been altered,
or taken out completely, replaced by new thoughts and ideas.

In
this set of articles I will mostly be concerned with past meanings of
fairy tales, their historical values, as will as ways of understanding
their historical meanings. This however does not mean that this is what
fairy tales mean today, fairy tales change meaning depending on the
time they are in, and depending on the way they are told, so they have
likely changed meaning many times and will likely change meaning many
more times. It is likely however that it is easier to interpret modern
day meaning because you the reader create this meaning, historical
meanings however have proved elusive, partly because people have felt
the need to find universal truths in the stories, or deep psychological
roots. However fairy tales likely have neither, a fairy tale is a story
that is meant to change, meant to be altered, so by its very nature
folktales are not so much universal in meaning as universal in the
ability to be meaningful. In other words fairy tales do not mean the
same thing for everyone or in every era, rather the way they are told,
and changed is such that fairy tales can have meaning for everyone who
reads them, and often this meaning is exactly what society is asking
for.

Cultural Relativism

To
begin to understand what fairy tales meant to peoples in the past one
must first come to understand the concept of cultural relativism, that
is the viewing of an event, a story, etc through the eyes of the
culture which that story (in the case of the fairy tale) comes from.
This is necessary because universal ideas are rare, there are many if
any complete universal truths in human beliefs, most ideas and concepts
look differently to every culture and social group. This concept is
complex in modern times, as there are literally thousands of cultures
on the planet, however when one adds the element of history into this
concept cultural relativism becomes even more difficult, for the people
one is trying to understand are long dead. One therefore must use what
they know, and yes sometimes what they can guess to understand these
people. This means that the interpretation of humans as a whole is an
ongoing process, and it is the debates, the questions, as much as the
answers that make researching and interpreting the fairytale so
interesting and fulfilling.

The
next step to understanding fairy tales is to begin to research multiple
cultures; this must be done without Western conceptions of the
happiness of hunter gatherer or pastoralcultures.
For many the search to understand other cultures begins with
preconceived notions, most often any more this is that these cultures
are better in some way. One must remmember that people have developed
the way they developed out of necessity on a planet with very different
geological histories, weather patterns, and social histories. The Kung!
were a hunter gatherer society because they where able to be, because a
long series of events forced them to change in such a way that they
would continue to be hunter gatherers. InNew York City, humans have become a Metropolitan society because a long series of events forced them to change to become athat
form of society. Understanding cultures is a very difficult task, one
which requires honesty and accepting that there are logical reasons for
the way people are. It also requires the belief that life is hard for
everyone that the struggle continues for all people no matter how
internal or superficial everyone from the Pigmies in the Jungles to the
Girl in California, to the starving peoples of the world, everyone has
concerns, has sadness, anger, fear, joy, and with any luck love. You
must come to accept and understand the emotions of other people to
truly understand other people.

Finally
in order to understand fairy tales you must of course begin to
understand the history of the area where they came from and quite
possibly a longer history behind that of peoples one would think are
totally unrelated to the people in question. Cinderella for example was
first written down as a story inChina.
This further adds difficulty to understanding any given fairy tale as
it is likely that most have traveled geographically through cultures as
will as through time. This aside however one can still learn a lot by
examining a singe regions history, or a single peoples history,
recalling that all people at some point where hunter gatherers, before
evolving to other forms of hunter gatherer societies, or agricultural
life styles. In studying a people’s history remember that what may be
most important to the fairy tale are not typically wars, there are
after all very few fairy tales of these things, rather what is
important are famines, diseases, religious, and cultural changes. Each
of these things could influence the way stories are told and the way
people think, and so should be examined to understand the basics of how
people at any given time may have felt. This way the history and the
fairy tales will both work to help develop our understanding of a
people, and humanity..

To
begin to understand the difficulties in understanding fairy tales lets
try an experiment I will tell you about two folk tales from different
lands, and you will attempt to guess at their meaning. In the first
folk tale some children sneak out into the fields at night, and are
cursed by evil spirits. Much like the first tale the second
is story two boys sneak off into the long grass together, there
they talk to a women they don’t know who gives them food. She then eats
one of them and chases the other who barely escapes with his life.

What
are the messages of these two fairy tales? If you said don’t sneak off
at night your wrong, if you said don’t talk to strangers your wrong,
and if you said anything involving sexuality you are very wrong.

The
message of the first surprisingly for most people of Western cultures
is in fact that you will be cursed if you go into the fields at night.
This is becuase the story is a Micronesian story and there are many
insects that can give horrible diseases to those who go into the fields
at night. The people where well aware of the consiquences of going into
the fields and night, though they did not know the origians of the
diseases.

The
second is a Yupik legend from the north, where the grass by rivers had
sink holes which children could die in, stories where a way of keeping
children away from these area’s yet children as young as seven would
(and still do) wonder onto dry parts of the wilderness alone to hunt
sometimes a mile or more from the village. So the concern was that long
grass was dangerous, not that strangers, or the act of wandering off
alone was dangerous.

Now
lets try another experiment. Imagine three things with regards to the
above stories. First a famine sweeps the land, making the abandonment
of children a common event. Second imagine that the woodlands of both
areas become filled with bandits, isolationists, wealthy nobles,
fugitives and more. And that these peoples are dangerous, and have at
times been dehumanized by the culture telling the stories, and are in
many ways the targets of theft. Now imagine that fear of witches grows
so great that people are burning them at the stakes by the thousands.

Suddenly
you have the stories of Hansel and Gretel and Molly Whuppee who’s
meanings are completely different from the above stories. Is this what
happened to the Hansel and Gretel stories? One can’t of course know for
certain but it is quite possible that such an evolution occurred.

Remember always that the fairy tales
you read are not likely the original tales even if they where written
exactly as told, for every time period in history changed these stories
to fit their needs and ends, to match their culture. Peasants after all
had no qualms about changing the stories to fit what they wanted or
needed to say, or to match what they felt was just good entertainment.

Further
the locations of the people telling the fairy tales changed constantly,
so the meaning which may have been obvious in a certian geographical
region, or cultural structure can be lost as the story leaves such
regions.

It
is important to continue the discussion of fairy tales by helping
rekindle half-truths and discussing some of the claimed myths, as will
as some of the likely facts regarding fairy tales, and their emotional
impact on people. I will begin this by pointing out that folklorists as
a whole will tend to agree that women are the mostly likely bearers of
many of the fairy tales, at least withinEurope.
This does not mean that it was always they who told the stories,
however in general it would seem that women who worked within the home,
or who told stories to families and each other where the most likely
tellers of such stories. This is important to understand because it can
help explain why many of the most involved or interesting fairy tales
involve female heroines. Keep in mind though this does not mean that
fairy tales would be free from what we would consider sexist thoughts,
as within may cultures the women are some of the main enforces of some
of the major anti-feminist aspects of that culture.

Another
thing to keep in mind when reading a fairy tale is that fairy tales
were told by adults, often times to adults. The themes therefore are
most often intended for adults, there is however an interesting facet
to keep in mind in this. That is that this does not mean that these
stories where not for children, though many have argued otherwise, in
her book “The Witch Must Die” Sheldon Cashdan states that it is a myth
that fairy tales teach messages and that they are intended for
children. For Cashdan fairy tales are much too gruesome to have been
intended for children. However while we may often feel lovely
sentiments of coddling children the truth of the past is far from this.
Think for example of how many children today watch movies rated R and
PG-13, now put yourself in a one room house in the past. What are the
odds in such a situation that children did not hear and have favorite
stories, especially when you consider what children where in the past.
Children where much harder then we think of them, for they watched half
the population die during some times, from disease, are and famine.
Children also did a lot of work, hard labor included, they where not so
cuddled as today’s children. And if children heard fairy tales, then
they would have altered the story tellers methods, and words, so for
good or bad the children of the past where a part of the fairy tales,
no matter how dark.

As
for the idea that fairy tales do not teach lessons this is not the
entire truth as all stories including fairy tales teach us things,
because we the reader or listener to these stories will take meanings
away from the stories. Further as we change and alter the stories we
often emphasis the parts that would give the fairy tales the meaning
that the person rewriting or retelling the fairy tale wants to give.
For this reason the fairy tales we are reading now do teach us to be
leery of strangers, to listen to our parents, and so forth. It doesn’t
matter what the original story was or what it was intended for what
maters is what the person receiving any given fairy tale is told. This
was the same in the past as it is today.

It
is important to keep in mind also that even should the intended meaning
of a story be to entertain the fairy tale will stoll transmit meaning.
All Fairy tales are a way of transmitting messages it is just not
always certain what this message might be. However to give a modern day
example of such transmission of meaning the fact that everyone in
movies needs to be beautiful to be loved gives these movies the message
that you too must be beautiful to be loved. Snow White transmitted this
same message to the listeners of the past as the princess succeeded in
getting the prince because of her beauty. At the same time of course
this story also taught the listeners that those who obsessed
competitively over how they looked would be punished. This is the
interesting conundrum of stories, for our cultural prejudices will show
through even as we try to eliminate the message these prejudices tell.

Finally
for anyone who would presume that the people told fairy tales of the
past solely for entertainment should read “The Grandfather and
Grandson” one of the folktales compiled by the Grimm Brothers this
story is a direct message about the treatment of ones elders, a story
which is used in churches to this day. This message occurs because
people not only look for messages in the stories they hear, but try to
add them to the stories they tell just as often.

I will mention at this point however that such meanings may have been
placed in the stories by the very religious Grimm brothers, who altered
many of the stories to some degree. So what meaning many of the stories
orginally held may be lost.

FranceandGermany, two lands one land and the back and fourth of history.

For those in Western Culture there are in truth only a few fairy tales which are hear commonly,these include Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel, etc. Our most common conceptions of these fairy tales comes fromFranceandGermanyand to a lesser extent fromNorthern Italy.
Though we might think of these countries has having distinct cultures
which are unified among themselves and separate from one another this
is not necessarily true now and it certainly wasn’t true in the past.
At one time France Germany andNorthern Italywhere
all occupied by a similar set of Germanic as will as more southern
tribes that did not conform to modern boarders. Such groups included
the Franks, theLombard’s,
the Goths, Gauls, Celts among many others. Further most all of these
nations where at one point united into a single Empire ruled over by
the Franks. The Franks were a Germanic Tribe who’s King is someone
considered to be one of Frances Greatest Rulers, Charlemagne. Notice
the cultural irony as these two kingdoms waged war and separated
themselves from each other culturally, some of their most important
cultural roots where fairly similar.

TheHoly Roman Empirewhich
spanned over these nations, is perhaps one fo the greatest influences
within these countries and this regions because of it religious,
infrastructural, and social contributions to people. When this Empires
reign came to an end the Frankish domination of these nations did not,
further the kingdom broke up along lines different from the current
national lines. The boarders of these lands divided and subdivided, as
its borders and peoples fluxuated, moved and fought wars within and
among each other, until the countries we know today emerged. But when
one considers that many of the fairy tales we know of today had their
origins from thousands of years ago, we can see how many of them may
have had their beginnings or major plot lines created during the time
whenFranceandGermanywhere the same set of nations.

Consider
now that the Franks, and the peoples of this region began as hunters
and gatherers, people who traveled to the cold Northern part ofEurope,
leaving behind warmer homes. These people grew hard, even as they began
to farm, splitting up into what was likely a clannish tribal systems.
This system of living was fairly close to nature, much more so then we
normally associate with Western peoples, there was however something
strange about these people. That is while most of the world is
considered to be more socially geared towards collectivism all the
peoples later conquered by these Germanic Tribes from 500 AD onwards
would be some of the few individualistic peoples in the world. While it
is common to associate such thinking with Rome and Greece, one must
consider at the fact that the peoples who are the most individualistic
in Europe are those who had the least influence from these groups,
including Germany, England, France, Denmark, Sweden, and of course
Northern Italy (Northern Italy was conquered and ruled by none Roman
Tribes). Consider then that what existed in this region was likely
current individualism or the birth place of this new cultural
dimension. This made the carrying and changing of the fairy tales of
this region much easier, allowing the fairy tales themselves to take on
new forms. For individualists can switch sides, and ideas quickly,
without truly switching sides, allowing extreme opposite thoughts to
exist in the same person.

So as these tribes moved South into What was onceRomanTerritory,
or Celtic lands they began to do two things. First they subdivided the
territory into regions and second they began to adopt the ideas and
stories of the southern peoples while changing these ideas to match
their own desires. It was this subdivision of so many peoples in a
single area that would force feudalism to come into being, for there
where so many different groups in a given area, peoples displaced who
would live in the woods as bandits, roving warlords, or just cultural
enemies with different ideas about life who would hide in the dark
woodlands. In such an environment the people where willing to give up
their freedom in order to gain safety and protection. This seems like
it could be important to understanding fairy tales for two reasons,
first that people should be so afraid they are willing to give up their
traditional freedoms is a significant factor in the stories people
would choose to tell, and second all peoples in this area experienced a
time when they had unknown dehumanized enemies out in the wilderness,
or even in the next village over. In dehumanization one of the common
beliefs is that those others eat humans, and since those others where
common, stories of near human monster cannibals would therefore be very
common as well.

Think
of this and then think about the Hansel and Gretel stories, an evil
creature in the woods waiting to devour people and most especially
children. While the meaning of these stories likely changed they could
easily have some of their roots, or at least their prevalence in the
dehumanization of other peoples, in the early Dark Ages. This however
does not explain how the parents in many of these stories could just
abandon their kids, especially to the wiles of the evil beings in the
woods.

The
answer to this question likely came later as did the addition of
abandoning ones children in the woods. For as disease and famine swept
through Europe over half of all children born would die, prompting
philosophers of the day to advise parents not to get too close to their
children. While such advice was likely not always followed in full it
would have influence, to the point where starvation did often lead
parents to abandon their children to the wilderness. The abandonment
then as will as the witch in the woods where both very real fears, not
some psychological symbol.

Its
interesting to note that many people seem to have been getting fairy
tales all wrong for quite some time. Many people who have discussed
fairy tales have said that the fairy tales represent some internal
desire. That the villains are representative of the mother, puberty,
and the bad parts of the listener. However it is just as likely that
the villain represents the very real external fears of the story
tellers, and of victory over such external forces. To illustrate this
idea I would like you to imagine that you are a great hero. Now what
are you battling? Chances are you imagine battling external forces,
because while it is important to overcome sins and primal urges this is
hardly what people typically day dream about over coming.

Then
what exactly does the witch mean in fairy tales? The fairy tale after
all is usually not a heroic struggle, in Cinderella, and Hansel and
Gretel or the vast majority of other evil villain fairy tales, the
story seems to focus on more domestic events. According to Sheldon this
means that the witch represents the bad parts of ones self, Bettelheim
states that the witch represents wrongful sexual desires or the hate or
anger of and at ones mother. However it is likely that these stories
have multiple meanings, the majority of which involve the destruction
of some external evil, or the avoiding of becoming evil.

Remember that fairy tales are
most often told by and to girls and women, this means that they will be
most often maternal and female based conflicts. Further it is important
to remember that no matter who was hearing the story such stories where
most often told by adults, they then are not the stories children need
to hear but the stories adults want children to hear. As Zipes has
pointed out numerous times all such stories are adult stories,
involving adult rather then child concerns, they are a way of
socializing children.For
this reason it is unlikely that psycho-analysis came into play in such
stories for it would be a rare Medieval parent to even think of Oedipal
concepts much less that this would be the parents primary concern
within a story. Parents rarely tell children stories to help them with
their sexual longings, at least not in so obscure a way as many people
seem to think they have. Certainly in the Twelve Dancing Princesses the
story likely had such elements in them, it was after all about girls
sneaking out at night to dance with boys. Such a story is much more
blatant in its plot line however, and it involves no witches no major
defeated opponents.

Think
now of Cinderella, and other wicked stepmother stories (keep in mind
when examining the wicked step mother motiph that Hansel and Gretel,
and Snow White had the orignial villions as their actual mother, the
Grimm's changed this in order to make the stories more acceptable). In
many of these stories the young girl is successful because of the faith
in their first mothers words, their hard work and continued kindness.
Of further importance is likely the punishment of the wicked step
mother, in a time when stepmothers where common as women died young one
of the primary cultural mores was that women should make good
stepmothers. It would have been the fear of every women that when they
died their children should end up with a wicked stepmother, someone who
cared little for their child, so the moral of these stories may have
been that the stepmothers success and happiness might rest with the
step daughter and failing to realize this could lead to punishment.
There are likely many other meanings to such tales, but the repeated
stepmother theme is likely due to the fear that ones child would end up
with an evil stepmother should the real mother die.

As for physical witches in fairy tales, their presence and death could in truth result from the real belief and killingKinder- und Hausmärchenof
witches at this time. For much of the time of fairy tales millions of
women and girls where burned as witches and so the fear that such
things might be in the woods or in the castle was very real. So to was
the fear that a girl might succumb to the temptations of magic, the
devil and witchcraft. People feared their daughters might follow the
dark path of those portrayed in the stories.

Remember at the time when most fairy tales inEuropewhere
told it was believed that girls where indeed very susceptible to the
dark lure of witchcraft, that they where lustful, and weak willed, so
susceptible to the traps of the devil. While obviously women and girls
are likely no more or even arguably less susceptible to many lures one
cannot place the constraints of reality over fairy tales for these are
about beliefs from the time they came out of. And during the dark ages
plagues, famines, and nature ravaged the poor of Europe, causing them
to believe that there where indeed evil witches among them working dark
magic’s, and people enjoyed the destruction of these beings so much
that at times they would pitch into a wild fervor killing and torturing
thousands of people. Further at these times it became a form of
entertainment to watch executions. For the girl then to destroy the
witch in the fairy tale is an indication of the duel nature of the
fairy tale, for as tales told by women they are often about female
heroines, but as the primary fear of the time was that of an external
female witch, and the possibility that a girl might become one was so
real that the witch had to die at the end of the story. This death
would represent a victory over external fears, just as it would
represent a lesson to people not to take the route of devil craft or
they would end up as the witch ended up.

Remember
as you study fairy tales that they have duel many meanings, meanings
which have changed over time as the stories have been edited and
reedited to fit the time period of the telling.

Fairies, Fairy Tales, Fairy Books

Stories
About FairiesRead
Fairies Tales
A series of tales about and from the perspective of fairies. These are
a series of individual short tales which together tell the
tale of how fairies compete and manipulate the world around them.

Primal
Fairies -
The story of ancient European fairies of the ancient and primal
forests.